More time with his family

When this blog started almost twenty years ago, Josh Frydenberg was an ambitious political staffer challenging for Liberal preselection against the sitting MP for Kooyong, Petro Georgiou. Today, Josh Frydenberg is trying to undermine both the federal MP for Kooyong and the preselected Liberal candidate for Kooyong - who for the first time in almost 80 years are not the same person - and Josh is neither of them.

Days ago, the press gallery were agreed about poll findings that Peter Dutton was nowhere near leading the Liberal Party back to government in a single term, but yet the Liberals remaining in federal parliament think he's doing a good job. Suddenly, if press gallery heroes like David Crowe or Josh Butler are to be believed, Liberals are clamouring for an alternative to the leader they fully support.

All that's in tatters now. Whenever the Leader of the Opposition speaks from now on, journalists have the excuse to ask him about Frydenberg, Frydenberg, Frydenberg indefinitely, as they do with beleaguered leaders. Karen Andrews, who had been challenged by Peter Dutton for preselection herself, initially called for an accomplished (younger) woman to have her preselection taken from her and given to a man deemed to have leadership potential. Andrews won't be in parliament after the next election but she has made her party's campaign for that election harder - but that doesn't mean the Liberals are divided, because only Labor has schisms and splits and chaos.

Imagine if Amelia Hamer had taken the sage advice from Jason Falinski to hand over her hard-won preselection to Frydenberg: "she would understand we want to put our best people on the field", apparently. Hamer was the best person in her preselection, and the preselectors agreed. Falinski is yet to secure preselection for the coming election, where his only real hope of beating Mackellar MP Sophie Scamps is if she simply stood aside for him.

David Crowe seems concerned that 30,000 voters might be transferred into Kooyong, who will be aware of Frydenberg but not of Monique Ryan. This is an odd assumption to make. It is so silly that it undermines the rest of his article and potentially diminishes any future articles he may write. Had Frydenberg succeeded in knocking off Hamer, Ryan's campaign would write itself: Frydenberg can beat women inside the Liberal Party, don't let him win outside. Ryan would paint Frydenberg as an entitled brat and would win in a canter. Everyone fancies themselves a battler, which is why politicians appeal to battlers: nobody believes Josh Frydenberg is a battler. Nobody believes Josh Frydenberg would stand up for them, not even people who like him.

Real leaders don't get gifted preselection. This country is on its 31st Prime Minister, and every one got there after facing down challenges within their party. No evidence exists that Frydenberg would or could help Liberals hold marginal seats like Deakin or Menzies, nor win marginal Labor seats like Chisholm, let alone those outside Victoria. Thank goodness Karen Andrews and the press gallery rate him, though.

The Liberal Party has a problem representing women and attracting those who didn't vote for them last time: a man who knocked off a duly preselected woman would have no claim to represent women's interests, inside the Liberal Party or outside it. Frydenberg's intervention in the Kew state preselection in 2014 against the talented Mary Wooldridge in favour of oafish Tim Smith has helped doom his party at the state level, a Pyrrhic victory if ever there was one.

The Liberal Party has had a long love affair with nuclear power, unreciprocated by the electorate. The Party has always dumped its nuclear option rather than lose votes:

• In 1970 the Gorton government proposed building a nuclear power station in the Jervis Bay Territory. The McMahon government kyboshed it the following year.
• The Howard government instituted a ban on nuclear power after repeatedly floating the nuclear idea, then facing such a backlash that they impsed a nuclear ban to try to avoid the subject ever coming up again.
• Josh Frydenberg called for a national debate on nuclear without advancing a proposition himself. He later became Federal Energy Minister and simply declared he wouldn't consider nuclear, and no journalist has pressed him on the issue since.

Now Peter Dutton is proposing nuclear power: if he wins government he might claim an electoral mandate, but he won't win so there isn't and won't be one. Frydenberg will not be able to de-nuclearise the Liberal Party if/when an election loss requires them to do so. Both Dutton and Frydenberg were members of the Morrison government committing Australia to AUKUS, which includes a nuclear waste dump somewhere in this country.

Dutton's other main weakness is also one afflicting Frydenberg: that of not having learned the lesson of multicultural Australia that the electorate tried and failed to teach John Howard in 2007. 30% of Australians were born overseas, and not necessarily in English-speaking countries. When Dutton demonises asylum-seekers or even condemns the government's responses to immigration policy, racist attacks increase on people from non-English-speaking backgrounds. Dutton won't be able to hold electorates like Deakin or win back those like Bennelong with his career-long anti-immigration stance, and no media strategy will protect marginal seat candidates from its force.

Frydenberg's video for Sky News on rising anti-Semitism showed lots of inconsolable verklempt Jewish Australians but offers no solutions in dealing with the anti-Semitism itself, nor for dealing with other forms of prejudice manifesting as social violence like anti-Islamic or anti-Indigenous words and actions. The Liberal Party needs to show that it has learned those lessons, but Frydenberg is one of the perishing few who likes the Liberal Party the way it is. Only the press gallery regards this as some insoluble conundrum.

Brett Worthington thought he was identifying self-image problems for Frydenberg and the Liberal Party, but his examples only involved press gallery images and assumptions about him:

The former Liberal deputy leader and treasurer Josh Frydenberg has long been told he'd be a prime minister one day.

Plenty of media articles profile him in this way. Patricia Karvelas and other journalists used their social media accounts to lobby for him and could not believe it when he was defeated, putting the lie to any notion of objectivity in Australian political journalism.

In the years since, it's seemed like a matter of when, not if, Frydenberg would re-enter the political arena.

When the electorate of Aston, just down the road from Kooyong, was vacated in 2023 the press gallery screamed like Beatles fans for Frydenberg to run. The Liberals chose a candidate who lived further from Aston than he did, and Frydenberg played little to no role in helping the Liberals win that by-election, which they didn't. There was another by-election in a winnable seat in suburban Melbourne (Dunkley), and Frydenberg's role was minimal there too. Worthington mentions Aston but doesn't square it with his much-vaunted yearn to return.

Frydenberg didn't have to be a one-seat wonder. In 2004 and 2007 he was offered other seats, but insisted on Kooyong or nothing. There is nothing stopping him knocking off the Victorian Liberals' weakest link, Jason Wood, in the safe seat of La Trobe: all that team-player, best-on-field stuff applies to Wood as much as Hamer.

[Frydenberg is] young, often dubbed moderate and from a state where the Liberal brand has been on the nose in recent election cycles.

Young? He's the same age as Dutton.

Often dubbed moderate - by whom? Frydenberg is a conservative. When the Liberals held a leadership election in September 2015 the moderates voted for Malcolm Turnbull, the conservatives for Tony Abbott - Frydenberg voted for Abbott. Frydenberg is a monarchist at a time when King Charles III is less a figure of Australian national unity than Taylor Swift. He voted against marriage equality. This son of refugees has never been asked about any of the Cabinet decisions he took to make life harder for asylum-seekers and other migrants (and no, we don't need to see picfacs of him munching banh mi or piroshki). It is no more valid to describe him as a 'moderate' than he is a 'sandwich' or a 'Wednesday'. Keep this in mind when reading Brett Worthington: he blindly repeats nonsense without really unpacking it.

As for Victoria, "a state where the Liberal brand has been on the nose in recent election cycles", what would be the point? What difference would Frydenberg make in holding Liberal marginals, winning Labor marginals or reclaiming seats like Goldstein?

Frydenberg had a gifted run in the federal political arena ... A prolific texter, Frydenberg has no shortage of supporters in the media eager to stoke a Josh for PM campaign.

Don't take my word for it that press gallery professionalism and objectivity is bullshit.

Frydenberg made it known he was considering a return, the news was reported, there was no shortage of reaction and a little over 24 hours later, he makes his first public comments, hosing down the speculation he'd fuelled.

This article contains all the proof you need that journalists are up to no good when they lapse into the passive voice. Josh sends them a text and the entire Australian media en bloc are as helpless as kittens. The news was reported, what can you do?

Every time it flares it serves as another reminder about the lack of depth within the federal Liberal ranks.

It flares. Nothing you can do.

Josh Frydenberg is not a solution to this problem because he lacks depth himself. There is simply no evidence of any conviction that he has brought to politics. Scott Morrison rose through a system of patronage that left him bereft when he attained the top job, and Josh Frydenberg would be no different in a leadership role. What did he learn from being Member for Kooyong 2007-22? What did he learn from the varous ministerial portfolios he held? Morrison has paraded his faith, what role does Frydenberg's play in his life (other than as identity politics and concern over nasty graffiti)? What about that family with whom he is spending time? What of Goldman Sachs?

For all Frydenberg's contact with journalists, none of them seem to have asked these fairly basic questions. For Worthington and other members of the press gallery, it seems impertinent to consider where there should be something in it for those of us outside both the Liberal Party and the press gallery in the return of Josh Frydenberg to public life.

Should [Amelia Hamer win Kooyong], that Josh for Canberra campaign will become even harder.

Harder for whom, Brett?

When former Kooyong MP Robert Menzies lost the Prime Ministership in 1941, he did not lose his seat. Menzies did, however, spend years re-examining his beliefs about the world, Australia's place within it, the place of politics within Australia, and his own role within politics. At a time when lots of people are re-examining these issues at fundamental levels, Frydenberg shows no sign of anything other than getting along and going along. If life can go on without him, perhaps it should.

Toward the end of his career, Menzies sounded out Amelia Hamer's great-uncle Dick to succeed him in Kooyong. Dick Hamer declined (and went into a long career in Victorian state politics) so Menzies was succeeded by Andrew Peacock. Peacock, like Frydenberg, was a get-along-go-along guy. Peacock's achievements in Papua New Guinea and in foreign policy are more significant than any Frydenberg achievement I can think of. Peacock never became Prime Minister either, he courted the press gallery of his time in his own way, and the country was hardly worse off for that.

Frydenberg says he is not going to challenge Amelia Hamer for Liberal preselection in Kooyong, and there are plenty of journalists willing to take him at his word and leave it at that. I pity Hamer, though. She is not going to get the sort of assistance Frydenberg got in his first election in 2007 from people like Peter Costello.

I am quite sure Amelia Hamer is capable, intelligent, nice, and possessed of more positive qualities than I can imagine. I am equally certain that she has never been a political candidate for national office, and that inexperienced people under pressure tend to make rookie errors. Hamer is not going to get anywhere near the $2mn campaign budget Frydenberg had in 2022. She is less likely to be forgiven for slips and flubs in her first campaign than Frydenberg was in 2007. The press gallery will descend on her in all its self-exculpating passive voice and there will (for all her abilities and promise) be nothing she can do, because traditional media exists for major parties and vice versa: and when the press gallery thinks about the Liberal Party, it thinks Josh, not Amelia.

Frydenberg is not a change agent and no evidence exists that he might become one. He is part of the Liberal Party's problems, particularly its lack of depth: he offers no solution. Maybe that's why the press gallery like him, though: they're fine with Labor but only in opposition, and Greens and independents scare them. Frydenberg would be predictably different rather than unpredictably better. There has been a lot said and written about the relationships between politicians and traditional media, but in Josh Frydenberg we see a relationship that serves neither party well at all.

Reform reform

The Liberal rightwingers who want to turn a large party into a small one have succeeded in convincing gullible broadcasters into calling them "reformers". It's an achievement for them I suppose, but it's amazing how the word "reform" acts as a verbal prophylactic on further thought.

In all broadcast outlets they call John Ruddick and his pals "reformers", and their agenda "reforms", without really thinking about what they might mean - as though the word itself drowns out thought and examination about how we might be governed. Today's risible effort by Peter Hartcher is just the latest offender; nowhere in Australia's supposedly diverse and competitive media is there any organ that refers to them in any way other than as "reformers". Nor do they examine what those "reforms" mean, for those in the Liberal Party, and for those of us outside it in jurisdictions governed by said party.

Let's understand this "reform" movement by reference to its actual behaviours, and analyse what those "reforms" might mean. Let us do, in other words, what Australia's political journalists are too lazy and stupid to do (harsh words those, but justified by examples in what follows). Australia's democracy has been ill-served by poor reporting. We've elected poor governments on the basis of poor advice from Hartcher and others telling us crises exist where they do not, that shit is actually chocolate, and yet those responsible for such poor and toxic advice remain in their offices.

The view from the aristocracy

Aristocracies preserve themselves longest, said the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, "but only democracies, which refresh their ruling class, can expand".

Quite so. It's just as true for organisations as it is for entire countries ... These power cliques are expert at preserving themselves. They are closed to refreshing themselves. They are stagnant, failing, largely invisible to the public, the slow-rotting foundations on which the public [information about] parliamentary structures stand.

Sure is. Politicians come and go, but Peter Hartcher is ensconced atop The Sydney Morning Herald. Hugh Trevor-Roper advised Rupert Murdoch's The Times that a forgery purporting to be the diaries of Hitler was the genuine article: he became a Lord, and Murdoch's organisation continues to rely on bogus information on many other issues (e.g. climate) rather than face up to issues of truth or falsehood. Just so we're clear about who's who and what's what.

There's a bit of Wikipedia journalism on North Sydney, followed by this:

It's such a Liberal stronghold that Labor has conceded defeat; it's not even going to put up a candidate for the North Sydney by- election. In short, it's a great opportunity for the Liberals to put forward an outstanding Australian, someone of real accomplishment, a future leader.

I'll give Hartcher that. Before I knew Trent Zimmerman was running I thought Turnbull would use the opportunity to get a top-level QC/SC into North Sydney, to avert the laughable situation whereby nobody in the Coalition had a finer legal mind than George Brandis. The parallels with Menzies and Barwick, or Howard and Daryl Williams, are instructive at a time when the law is a major aspect of the changing contemporary relationship between government and the governed.

Instead, the power aristocracy that controls the NSW Liberal party head office declared an "emergency", shut out branch members from voting, and imposed a party machine operative on the electorate.

Political parties move fast like this whenever there's a sudden election. It isn't the first time the Liberals have done this and nor is the practice unknown in other parties. Hartcher's hysterical hyperventilation echoes Sheehan's shifty shouting in keening for things that never were, and confusing anti-democratic rightwing clowns with democratic reformers.

Branch members did vote in that preselection, and it is misreporting for Hartcher to claim otherwise. He's so carried away pushing an agenda that he's made an error of fact. A junior reporter would be disciplined for that; the political editor seems to be above such petty disciplines as mere factual reporting. Local branches did get a say. Hartcher and Sheehan imply that they might have voted differently if they had exclusive rights over their local candidate; I'm not sure that's true.

A senior federal Liberal describes his achievements with this euphemism: "He's a man of wide experience within the party."

It wouldn't be a Hartcher story without an anonymous quote, with the unspoken demand you be impressed that senior sources talk to him (and play him for a mug). We might equally say that Peter Hartcher is a man of wide experience within Fairfax and the press gallery.

If I were political editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, I would remember (or be reminded) that Zimmerman had recently run for preselection in the state seat that covers most of North Sydney. I would recall many of the criticisms that can be made of Zimmerman now could have been (and were) made against Hockey when he was first preselected, or former Liberal North Sydney MP John Spender: great party pedigree, not much accomplishment beyond it.

Zimmerman was President of the NSW Young Liberals in 1991-92. His predecessor as NSW Young Liberal President was Joe Hockey, a former candidate for the federal leadership and a long-serving minister. He was succeeded by John Brogden, who went on to become state Liberal leader. The tension between these three was adequately described in Madonna King's biography of Hockey. If Hartcher can accept (without smart-alec wisdom-after-the-event) that Hockey and Brogden were politically talented, then he can accept the same of Zimmerman.

The broadcast media apoplexy over Zimmerman reminds me of similar kerfuffle from Victoria in 2006, when Josh Frydenberg ran for Liberal preselection in the safe Liberal seat of Kooyong. Nine years later Frydenberg is a Cabinet minister. Zimmerman is much smarter, harder-working, and better able to get over himself than Frydenberg (the same can be said for most people, and some bits of furniture).

What does it mean for "the Liberal Party" to endorse a candidate?

When I was a member of the NSW Liberals in the 1990s I voted in preselections for Liberal candidates. So did John Ruddick, for that matter. Neither of us were members of a "power aristocracy", or even senior members of the organisation. We sat among local Liberals in making those decisions, because the Liberal Party selects its candidates as a cohesive organisation rather than the sort of franchise operation the "reformists" want.

Every member of the Liberal Party is a member of a local branch. Some local branches operate in areas where the local members are (almost) always a Liberal; these are safe seats. Some local branches operate in areas where local members are sometimes Liberals, often not; these are marginal seats. Some operate in areas where the Liberal Party has never been represented at state or federal level; these are safe Labor or Nationals seats. None of them are more/less Liberals based on where they live. Members of all those types of branches come together to represent the Liberal Party as a whole. When the Liberals preselect a candidate for North Sydney, or anywhere else, that candidate represents the Liberal Party as a whole.

When the Liberal Party loses office at state or federal level, the MPs preselected for safe seats on Sydney's north shore and elsewhere become the face of the party as a whole, and provide the building blocks for re-growth. When the party preselects fools for these seats, the image of the party as a whole suffers. When the party preselects capable-seeming people for those seats it reflects well on the party as a whole. The party has a renewal opportunity in North Sydney, and soon in Berowra and Mackellar and hopefully Warringah. If the party as a whole chooses well in those seats, the Liberal Party across the state and nation will be well served; if they choose badly, good local candidates in marginal seats will be handicapped by association.

Many readers of this blog will not be sympathetic to the Liberal Party, but to understand how it works you have to put yourselves in the shoes of those who are.

Political journalists and the Liberal Party

The Liberal Party is the leading party in the Coalition of parties that governs Australia, the country's most populous state (NSW) and a few other states besides. If you don't really understand the Liberal Party, you probably aren't much chop as a political commentator regardless of what it says on your business card.

If you want to talk about democracy in the Liberal Party, start by explaining why local members in safe seats should get all the profile, the kudos and resources, while Liberals in marginals and other seats make do with scraps. A fundraiser in North Sydney will raise more money than a similar event in almost any marginal; those who set up the North Sydney Forum knew this, and you'd think Hartcher of all people would go back through his notes on that. It was (typically) sloppy journalism for Hartcher not to call Ruddick on his "reforms", to interrogate his ideas.

From 1990 to 1996, North Sydney was represented by an independent MP, Ted Mack. Mack had hundreds of local supporters who didn't give a damn what Liberal Party head office wanted, and didn't care about Liberals inside North Sydney or beyond it. They raised their own money and took their chances. What the "reformists" want is a version of the Mack model: for local Liberals to select local candidates, removing the idea of whole-party candidate endorsement, but gaining all the money and resources that come with a major party. Sheehan and Hartcher haven't considered that. Nobody else who calls these people "reformers" has, either.

I called out Gabrielle Chan and Daniel Hurst from Guardian Australia on social media about this. They had enough social-media savvy to say "Thanks for getting in touch!", but neither they nor anyone else covering politics in the broadcast media show any sign of questioning the terms "reform", "reformist" etc. regarding these people and their agenda. Being dumb is one thing, being incorrigible is another.

Political journalism fails when it makes you less well-informed about politics rather than you were after reading/ hearing/ watching it. When political journalism fails, it has far-reaching consequences for the nation.

Moderation in all things

Hartcher flails about with Wikipedia, incensed that someone should have gotten to Zimmerman's position without duchessing him. He then cuts-and-paste a whole lot of wild-eyed Sheehan howling about Michael Photios (who is, to be fair, close to Zimmerman). Then comes this:

[Zimmerman's] faction is known as the "moderates" but it's a system based on patronage, not ideology.

Well, yes and no. For 18 of the past 20 years the Liberal Party has been led by either John Howard or Tony Abbott: there isn't a lot of ideological moderation left. The only real "moderation" comes in tolerance of intra-party dissent, which is a "democracy" issue I suppose.

In the 1990s John Ruddick wanted republicans out of the Liberal Party. "Go join the Labor Party!" was one of his favourite refrains to us "lefties". In 1997 he ran for a Senate vacancy, and lost to Marise Payne - a woman, a moderate, a republican, a former NSW Young Liberal President, a friend of Trent Zimmerman, and now a minister in the Turnbull Government. Those of us who are awake to Ruddick know that had he won, he would have become like South Australia's Cory Bernardi. Look at how Ruddick embarrassed himself at APEC in 2007 by demanding we all fawn over the visit of President Bush (it's in the archives, journos!). Not even the most obtuse press gallery journalists regard Bernardi as a "reformer", yet they happily and unthinkingly slap the title on Ruddick.

When the right control the Liberal Party, they set the terms of compliance and enforce them ruthlessly. A few weeks ago, Eric Abetz was foaming at the mouth at the very prospect of Liberals voting for same-sex marriage: now that the boot's on the other foot, Abetz is happy to cross the floor over an issue that was settled when he was a member of Cabinet. John Ruddick was as happy as a pig in mud within the party of Howard and Abbott, and goodness knows he flung plenty of the stuff; but now that it's not all going his way, he's flounced out and is openly threatening to take down an endorsed Liberal candidate.

You'll note that Juris Laucis got off much more lightly than any outspoken Liberal would have if Ruddick and pals were running things. Bronwyn Bishop shirtfronted Liberals who went to the press against her and hers, but is more than happy to let peanuts like Laucis and Ruddick off the leash when it suits.

Ruddick is mates with Jackie Kelly, another self-styled Liberal "reformer". Kelly also quit the Liberal Party and ran against an endorsed Liberal candidate, directing preferences to Labor.

Abetz had said it was some sort of tragedy that people left the Liberal Party after Turnbull became PM. With Ruddick, and Kelly, and this shithead, and that dill, and others besides - they don't seem like much of a loss in nett terms. Hartcher's idea of "Liberal rot" more and more upon Ruddick and his word trumping all other considerations. This isn't some sort of Liberal Spring, and I'm not going back - but there sure is a gap between the line Hartcher/Sheehan wants to push and the actual facts.

If I was a political journalist I'd be awake to this "reform" scam by bloody-minded rightwingers who can't get their way: but not a single member of the "competitive" press gallery, nor any of their "political editors", are.

Ruddick made headlines when he was twice threatened with suspension from the party for daring to publicly urge reform. Now he's gone further and quit the party in despair ... "The Left ran the party in NSW and it was a disaster, the Right ran the party in NSW and it was a disaster, we need a new way, and that is democratic reform.

If you leave the Liberal Party in despair, as I did in 2000, you stop referring to the party and its members as "we". Factions become a problem for other people. You get on with your life.

Although Ruddick was part of the minority faction, the Right, he says his motives are not factional ...

What sort of "journalist" takes someone like John Ruddick - or anyone else in politics really - at their word?

Get to work

Let's set aside journalists not doing their jobs, a regular theme of this blog. You did ask Ruddick what he did for a living, didn't you Peter Hartcher?

... mortgage broker ...

Ah yes.

Maybe there are Labor-voting mortgage brokers out there, but I haven't met many. There may even be some who are Greens, or Racists Who Like Being Racist But Don't Like Being Called Racist, or other parties. Met plenty of Liberal mortgage brokers/financial advisors though. I note that when Liberal governments get in, they tend to relax reporting and other regulatory compliance issues on mortgage brokers, such as acting in the client's interests rather than the broker's. To be fair, there was a bit of coverage about this in the broadcast media - mostly by the business journalists rather than the political journalists. They noted the donations to the Liberals by big financial advice firms, without really looking into the little guys (big players have big compliance departments who take regulation and reporting in their stride; smaller ones less so).

Blessed are the financial advisors, and heaven forfend that any imputation should fall upon ol' Johnny Ruddick - but if I was a political journalist I would examine further the link between this man's business and political interests. Not saying there's anything there - indeed, I'd give him the benefit of the doubt - but just as mortgage brokers tell you they'll give you the best possible deal on your mortgage, so too journalists love to say they're inquisitive and sceptical and ask the tough questions.

"If I run I'd say, 'This is a referendum about whether we want a democratised, reinvigorated Liberal party or whether we want the head office machine and its dull candidate to have ever-growing power.'"

He says that, if elected to federal parliament, he would vote as a pro-Liberal independent, "I wouldn't do an Oakeshott or a Windsor." And he'd prefer not to have to run at all. He's casting about for another candidate to stand as an independent Liberal against Zimmerman.

Why not? Oakeshott and Windsor got great deals for their electorates in 2010-13. If you quit the Liberal Party "in despair", as Oakeshott and Windsor did the Nationals, why not? Why did a journalist who followed the 2010-13 parliament closely not unpack this?

Why is Ruddick "casting about"? Does he want his vision for the Liberal Party or not? Is he afraid to get his hands dirty (yep, sounds like the John Ruddick I know)?

The byelection is a bit over a month away - now's not the time for "casting about", now's the time to get it together. Hartcher really has lost whatever investigative touch he may have had.

The whole point of reform, Ruddick says, is about attracting candidates of real accomplishment "people like Malcolm Turnbull", not faceless apparatchiks.

Turnbull is going to campaign for the endorsed Liberal candidate, and I doubt he is fooled by Ruddick's saccharine compliment. Ruddick didn't run in that preselection because Zimmerman would have thrashed him, even with a greater branch weighting. By dodging the prospect of losing a ballot while standing for a principle, Ruddick can claim to stand for democracy without looking like the serial loser that he is (the Liberal Party just doesn't want him, they never have). Ruddick's being disingenuous about Turnbull and Hartcher's too dumb to call him on it.

Ruddick is no more a "reformer" than he is a "saucepan", an "idiot", or a "Wednesday morning". This will not stop journalists insisting that both a) he is so a reformer, and b) when it comes to politics, they know what they're talking about.

Political bikies

If we have a democratic party, there simply won't be this bikie gang style of factions because you'll have 1000 people voting instead of a handful.

Former Liberal leader Billy Snedden once described the Whitlam government as "political bikies pack-raping democracy". Former NSW Labor Premier Nathan Rees and former Queensland LNP Premier Campbell Newman announced plans to crack down on bikie gangs and spiralled into political oblivion. Going after bikies should be a political winner, but it clearly isn't.

Everyone, just cut out the bikies thing. That includes you, Ruddick.

Song of Myself

Tony Abbott showed in his parable of the medicine cabinet in Battlelines that when he is given a job and doesn't want to do it, he simply doesn't. Commentators who call on Turnbull to pull Abbott into line are stupid and ignorant of history, and of any tangible mechanisms to "pull Abbott into line".

You don't pull Abbott into line. Kevin Rudd was ready for a third crack at the Prime Ministership, like Andrew Fisher, until the ALP told him firmly it was a non-starter. The Liberal Party won't do it. If you want Tony Abbott out of a job he does not want to do, the only way to do it is to get behind the most effective political operation I have seen in a long time.

I laugh at supposedly experienced commentators who fall over themselves with shock and horror about Abbott's speech in London: how could we possibly have known what he was like? Oh please, Barrie and Paul, please just fuck off, and take Hartcher and the "reform" zombies with you.

Reform political journalism

The very word "reform" has become so debased that anyone who wants to change anything, and cloak themselves in respectability, will call their tweaks "reform". Protagonists in zombie movies used to cry out for "brains" - these days zombies cry out for "reform".

Journalists don't have the skills to assess whether or not a proposal really will have the positive, far-reaching effects suggested by the dictionary definition of that word, but they bleat for "reform" nonetheless. Tax reform, productivity reform, reform reform.

Journalists can detect if a reform is "controversial". If it's "controversial" is unlikely to be "bipartisan", which is the gold-standard for political journalists. Any policy that ascends to "bipartisan" can only be good, even if it is an embarrassing and costly and all things against the dictionary definition of reform: mandatory detention of asylum-seekers, superannuation tax concessions, defence procurement, billion-dollar fuck-ups that cost our nation more than money, all of them bipartisan and lauded by people like Peter Hartcher. Anyone who wants to "reform" those things, particularly in a bipartisan way, will get a rails run from Hartcher and other press gallery dummies.

In the 1980s sitcom The Greatest American Hero the character Bill Maxwell (Robert Culp) would fall into a sudden deep sleep if he heard the word "scenario". It was the hook for many comic moments, and the Liberal right's use of the word "reform" on the press gallery is similar (all the funnier when press gallery journos get all huffy about their experience and savvy, etc.). Eric Abetz talked about reform all the time and did bugger-all. John Ruddick has learnt this trick, hiding in plain sight under a cloak of "reform". If Tony Abbott had used the word more he might still be PM.

Australian political journalists notice that when politicians use the word "reform" they turn people off, but still they persist in reporting "reform" without examining it. They fail to realise they discredit themselves when they bandy about a word when it is obvious they do not know what it means, and that their sources use the word deliberately in order to deceive.

Protection-ism

Insofar as the Abbott government has a heart or a core at all, it is trying to create a convincing form of non-economic protectionism. It can't succeed at that, it won't succeed, although it already seems to have a convincing re-election scenario in place.

Protectionism

For most of the 20th century the Australian economy was highly protected. Australian manufacturers were protected from import competition by tariffs and other similar measures. In return for this protection they were obliged to pay Australian workers higher wages than workers in other countries would get for similar work.

Murdoch commentator Paul Kelly identified what he called "the Australian Settlement", a system in five parts which began to be unravelled in the 1980s under Hawke and Keating:

• White Australia
• Import protection
• Centralised wage fixation
• State paternalism; and
• Imperial benevolence (first under Britain, then the US)

This system of economic protectionism began to falter in the 1960s, and aspects of it were modified during the 1970s and '80s. The wholesale removal of this system and an embrace of a low-tariff exposure to global market forces took place under the Labor government of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating (1983-96). They slashed tariffs and other trade barriers, and floated the exchange rate of the Australian dollar (i.e. rather than have government set the value of the currency, it was set by the market). They also reduced the share of corporate income that went to wages, and wound back long-standing measures that limited labour market flexibility.

The governments that followed Hawke-Keating did relatively little in terms of economic reform. Even now, commentators will urge politicians to engage in more economic reform, without being specific what that should be: roads or public transport, broadband, still more reductions in working conditions, more tax or less (usually less), etc. No politician wants to burn themselves out like Hawke and Keating did, realising too late that all political careers end and that you may as well do something with them whilst you're there.

Abbott's dreaming

Tony Abbott never promised to reintroduce trade protectionism or centralised wage fixation. What he seems to want is a variation on Kelly's five themes, namely:

• A mainly Caucasian Australia, with vigorous non-Caucasian cultures like Islam or Indigenous communities shunted to the fringes and policed for any sign of dissent;
• Trade-promotion measures that only really apply to high-volume mineral and agriculture exports
• Acquiescence to import deals favourable to foreign goods and services (e.g. interstate dispute settlement processes)
• State paternalism (but only in policing, defence, and intelligence, at the expense of civil liberties); and
• Imperial benevolence (definitely the US, but one that's less dominant globally and which has made significant missteps in western Asia)

As far as employment is concerned, Abbott regards jobs as private-sector welfare, rather than as roles necessary for the economy to function (more on that later), or occupations that give workers' lives meaning. Abbott believes that a sound economy will make jobs plentiful and stable, and believes his mere presence in government is all that's necessary to give the economy the confidence it needs to keep producing stuff and keep people employed.

This government has given no thought at all to the idea of economic development leaving employment behind, and what that means for the nation. That isn't quite the stuff of treason but it does mean we are being misgoverned.

This government has been keen on some form of state paternalism in a straitened age. It wanted to extend this to welfare recipients, but this only focused on inequality and made gainfully employed people fear for what might happen if their personal circumstances deteriorated through no fault of their own. No government is safe in those rare but potent occasions when middle-income people start identifying with lower-income people.

The government's lust for state paternalism has shifted from social security (which presupposes social division without social disintegration) to national security (which regards division as disintegration). The first step has been to define "national security" to include people who aren't threats to the nation in any meaningful sense: lonely randoms who stumble into militant Islam (which does not quite include that attention-seeking loser from Sydney's Martin Place siege, but Murdoch journos and other simpletons lump him in), asylum seekers, artists - and anyone using that thing Abbott can't quite fathom, in terms of its form or its appeal: the internet.

The press gallery has been content to report this as some sort of Canberra parlour game - which it is, sort of, if you overlook actual threats to civil liberties, and believe all that policing activity precludes any real threat to Australian lives and property.

Which brings us to ...

Laura Tingle and business confidence

Laura Tingle is political editor for The Australian Financial Review. She is one of the few press gallery journalists who, when a politician makes an announcement, validates and verifies it with other sources of information*.

The target market for The Australian Financial Review is corporate Australia. These people who seemed so enthusiastic about the prospect of an Abbott government while Labor were in office, yet who are according to Tingle quite surprised and dismayed by the reality of the Abbott government.

No one can think of a funny retort to Tony Abbott, possibly because they are having enough trouble coming to terms with the unhinged nature of the rhetoric in which our Prime Minister now engages.

Firstly, Abbott was always big on the apocalyptic rhetoric. It was part of his 'junkyard dog' thing when he was first elected to Parliament in 1994, in the dying days of the Keating government. He did it all the time when Howard was in government; the press gallery regarded it as part of his charm. He kept at it when Labor were in government, and since he became Liberal leader in 2009 he has pretty much done it daily.

That word "now" does Tingle a disservice. In the lead-up to the last election, when the press gallery seemed convinced that the sunlit uplands of good government were within reach, Tingle was at least dubious, occasionally putting Cassandra-like warnings on the record. Nobody in the press gallery has any right to be surprised at Abbott; the more experience you have, the less right you have to act all surprised at what he and his government are like.

Secondly, Bill Shorten comes up with funny retorts to Abbott all the time. As an authoritarian, Abbott regards others as either allies or enemies. Being ridiculed blurs that clear line, and Abbott hates ambiguity. Mockery is the very thing authoritarianism elevates you above.

The press gallery thinks it's their job to stand around whispering and giggling about powerful figures. They resent Shorten's funny retorts, which they call "zingers", which they have to report to outsiders undeserving of insider wit.

Abbott is taking a wild punt on a message that would be coming out of the Coalition's focus groups. That is, whatever voters think of him, the thing they crave more than anything else is stability and certainty, not just after the Rudd/Gillard years but at a time of deep economic uncertainty, and even amid the shock they have had in the past 12 months when the return of "adult government" only gave them more uncertainty in the form of the 2014 budget and February's almost leadership coup. In what could be a tight election contest, Tony Abbott will be relying on this yearning for stability to save his increasingly undeserving neck.

The lack of scrutiny of Abbott, the fact that the press gallery gave him a free pass for being the antidote to both Rudd and Gillard, meant that he could create a sense of certainty without any ability to deliver it. All Opposition Leaders promise a sense of certainty: even those who never made it sought to cultivate an unthreatening image. It's why he was so ready to be portrayed as a "daggy dad", and why he implied (largely unchallenged) that he contained economic confidence within his person awaiting release by vice-regal imprimatur.

Abbott never had the ability to restore economic confidence, nor confidence in the security of the nation (however defined). Nor was there any basis for confidence in his administrative ability, nor in the regard for which his Coalition colleagues held him. Again, the more time you've spent in the press gallery and the fancier your official title, the less excuse you have to be surprised by Abbott.

The business community worked closely with Abbott before the last election. They gave him millions of dollars. They helped develop such policies as this government has. They accepted his assurances that he had the relationship with the public necessary for those policies to not only pass through parliament but be accepted and supported by the wider public.

Now they admit, feebly and privately, that this wasn't what they meant. Their creation, like that of Dr Frankenstein, careens across the landscape on a mission to crush, kill, destroy. Laura Tingle is too polite to confront them with this.

Abbott was always undeserving of the job of Prime Minister. This isn't a recent development.

The Prime Minister is desperate to shut down any possible area of Labor attack.

Oppositions gotta oppose.

Yet all he is currently achieving is open warfare within his own ranks on a range of contentious issues from national security to gay marriage, and policy chaos in the pronouncements of his ministers. He is actually fomenting division between his cabinet and the party room on national security.

And you expected - what, exactly? Was it really only social media denizens who knew an Abbott government would tie itself up in its own contradictions?

On Wednesday, Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenburg [sic] tried to give the government wriggle room on retirement incomes policy, telling a Canberra conference "the government will, of course, consider good ideas put forward as part of the tax white paper process and any changes recommended by that process will be taken to the Australian people at the next election".

It should not have been that controversial a statement.

Yet it was smacked down within hours, first by Treasurer Joe Hockey, then by Abbott.

Hockey had second thoughts on Thursday and he too tried to keep some room for change in a second term.

Two things come from that.

First, the government's tax reform process is as dead as Greg Jericho said it was. Next time Abbott, Hockey, Frydenberg or anyone else confuses it with a live prospect, journalists should laugh and  let their audience in on the joke. They should not do what they usually do - simply broadcast the quote, considering they have chewed up media space and thereby done their jobs.

Second, what the government is trying to do is not only shut down their own options, but those for the alternative government. It's possible that Abbott, Hockey et al won't even be in government after the next election. The government claims Labor will jack up taxes, while Labor denies it: this is to deny Labor the scope an alternative government needs to address the country's economic issues (real or perceived). Therefore, Abbott will claim that Labor would balance the budget through retirement incomes, because all other options will be ruled out; the press gallery will not think outside that narrative, so there's the next election for ya.

Ironically, retirement income is an area where everyone agrees that, because of its long-term nature, there needs to be bipartisanship. Both sides of politics pay lip service to this idea yet cannot resist the temptation to play politics, whether on pensions or super.

If bipartisanship isn't possible (let alone whether it results in the best possible policy), stop wishing for it. Where better to stop wishing for something so unnecessary and counterproductive than the hard-bitten no-nonsense pages of The Australian Financial Review?

Years ago it became fashionable to outsource service delivery from government to the private sector. But in the current, fetid atmosphere, people outside government are taking an "oh for goodness sake, let me do that" approach to policy too.

This idea that policy and politics is too important for politicians - I'm sure I've heard it before, and not just "in the current, fetid atmosphere". It's called democracy, Laura. As the major parties' lack of touch with people increases, as they seek cosy bipartisanship over the tumult of consultation, expect "the current, fetid atmosphere" to become the new normal. Political climate change, if you will.

A point of underlying agreement was that things can't stay as they are. As shadow treasurer Chris Bowen told the conference, the irony of the government's approach of doing nothing is to create more uncertainty. That's because few people believe the system is working, equitable or affordable.

Bipartisanship led us to this position. Bipartisanship keeps us in stasis. Therefore, to move on from this position, we need something other than bipartisanship.

Sinodinos reflected on how important external pressure and community consensus had proved in forcing the hand of governments on numerous occasions, notably on Howard's signature tax reforms and on climate change.

How much did he charge to say that? (Zing!)

Dawkins observed that the risks of vacating a policy debate are leaving it open for others, and making it harder to do an inevitable U-turn without looking ridiculous.

Likewise! (Zing! Balance!)

Unfortunately, Tony Abbott seems to have perfected the art of looking ridiculous whether or not he is doing U-turns.

Zing. Bipartisanship is the last refuge of political and journalistic scoundrels. If you want to get important things done, bipartisanship must die; if you want to tell the big stories, kill your yearning for bipartisanship.


* "Other sources of information" does not include other politicians, anonymous sources, or other journalists. This verification and validation is, in theory, what journalists do. In practice, press gallery journalists do this rarely if at all, which is why disdain for press gallery journalists does not mean a disdain for the very practice of journalism per se.

A slight change of emphasis

The reshuffle is interesting for how this government sees itself.

First, it's limited in scope, which reinforces Abbott's idea that there isn't much wrong with the government that a bit of spin can't fix. It also reinforces the idea that shifting some of the government's alternative leaders - Bishop, Turnbull,  and yes even Hockey - would be career-limiting for Abbott.

The only governments that have far-reaching changes to their ministerial line-ups are those in real trouble, like the two reshuffles Labor had in 2013. This government may well have a reshuffle or two on that scale, but not yet.

Abbott has not promoted any big thinkers because he does not want any profound transformations in the way policy is conducted. He does not want to have to defend any controversial ideas on matters about which he knows little and cares less.

Andrews in Defence We're sending our forces into Iraq at a time when warfare, like all other facets of human activity, requires fundamental reexamination of a number of basic assumptions. Australia's strategic environment is shifting fast. Kevin Andrews is not the man to handle that.

If you accept those limitations, then what is needed in that role is a program manager par excellence - someone who will ensure Australian warfighters go into mortal danger relying on kit from the cheapest bidder. He's not that, either.

Andrews holds the fate of a large chunk of the South Australian economy in his hands. He'll give them more than the bugger-all currently on the table now, but not much more. He won't be able to wrest any political credit for that away from the state's Labor Premier, Jay Weatherill, and will be deaf to the screams of SA Liberals on why that matters to them.

Defence is the death-seat of federal politics. Apart from genuine policy nerds like David Johnston and Kim Beazley, every minister for the past 40 years was appointed to that role in full knowledge that their career was over (apart from Joel Fitzgibbon, which demonstrated Rudd didn't get the role Defence plays in foreign policy). Andrews is being managed out of politics.

The mad scheme for Credlin to take his seat remains in place. Only Canberra insiders blithely assume the Victorian Libs will meekly comply with an order issued from Abbott's office. It also means that the constituency of paternalistic religious conservatives will have to be represented by someone else, which will mean someone like Bruce Billson, Tony Smith and/or Michael Ronaldson will come under threat, blood will beget blood, etc.

Morrison to Social Services This assumes Morrison has attained a reputation as a competent administrator, with some sort of magical touch to get things through the Senate. This portfolio covers 20% of the Budget and the fun ain't done in that portfolio. The people most impressed by his tough-guy antics against refugees are older people with few skills, who fret most about refugees taking their jobs, and who are also most affected by changes to pensions or unemployment.

It also assumes Senator Marise Payne, who has basically been responsible for executing policy in this area (and helping outmaneuver Andrews brainfarts like denying young unemployed people support for six months) hasn't done enough to warrant a promotion. Keep this in mind when you cheer Abbott's doubling of female representation in Cabinet (more below).

Dutton to Immigration This assumes the case for our current immigration policy has been made. It hasn't.

Conservatives confuse doltish obstinacy with firm consistency of purpose, which is why they rate Dutton more highly than his talents and record suggest. He was a political passenger, offering nothing against Nicola Roxon or Tanya Plibersek as ministers for health. As minister and now shadow, Catherine King ran rings around him. If Richard Marles takes the kid gloves off in dealing with the new boy, it could be the making of him.

Support for the current immigration regime seems strong but individual incidents puncture it. Polling does not capture this. Morrison starved journalists of detail and derided them for writing rubbish, but they love being put in that bind because they love Strong Narrative over anything else. Morrison, like Howard, had the ability to look plaintive while being inflexible - a tactic that fools journalists - but Dutton can't do that.

Dutton has only two political talents. He picked the Liberal leadership changes since Howard with great accuracy and extracted great deals for himself. He comes from a state that is crucial politically but which doesn't send talented people to Canberra.

Dutton will overreach the wide-ranging powers Morrison won for him. At exactly the wrong moment, Dutton will make a dumb and callous statement that leads to a policy rethink greater than he can handle.

He can plug, plug, plug a message regardless of facts or changing circumstances, a quality prized highly among those who regard politics as a sub-type of public relations. It won't be enough.

Ley in Health Of all the Coalition MPs not initially appointed to Abbott's cabinet, Ley had the strongest case for inclusion. Her appointment is less a what-if than a why-not. She is across the detail and can plug a line as well as anyone while also having a mind of her own. In short, she makes a stronger case for inclusion than almost anyone there now. If anyone is going to come up with a workable arrangement on state funding or NDIS she will do it. She will also counter some of King's work on regional health initiatives.

Ley's appointment is a tacit admission that Dutton failed in Health, and that his failure is politically costly. Peta Credlin had assured female Coalition MPs that there would be more opportunities for them but now we see what that means as far as Abbott is concerned: women tidy up after men.

Frydenberg as Assistant Treasurer This is reward for service to Abbott.

The Assistant Treasurer is basically Minister for Tax. The Budget has a revenue problem and this government will shy away from far-reaching tax reform. Therefore, the battle will be joined at the level of detail: the government will want to close lurks and loopholes while the lobbyists who pushed for them will want them kept open. The Assistant Treasurer will need an eagle eye for detail and a firm commitment to what's right for the country: the 2006 version of Arthur Sinodinos would have been perfect.

Unfortunately, we've got Josh, who has glided through life with a superficial charm designed to disguise his boredom with detail. He's an errand boy. Nobody wants this guy in the trenches when it gets tough, and this is one tough job. He doesn't complement Hockey's weaknesses, he compounds them.

He was in charge of not one but two of Abbott's so-called bonfires of red tape. Rather than do the hard work of identifying and costing (politically as well as economically) counterproductive regulations, Frydenberg slapped together a whole lot of straw men that impressed nobody but press gallery journalists. It was lazy stuff and this blog has had it in for him before he was first elected.

Others who might have done this job better - Little Jimmy Briggs, Kelly O'Dwyer, Christian Porter or even Steve Ciobo - are right to feel passed over for a lesser person. Briggs and Ciobo should be wangling invitations to Mal and Julie's supper club.

The Parly Secs
- Christian Porter (replacing the ousted Johnston from WA) rose fast and far with little competition in his native state, and it will be interesting to see what errands Abbott sends him on.
- Kelly O'Dwyer's investigation into foreign investment in Australian real estate looked like an audition for a higher role (along with hundreds of media appearances where she unblushingly recited the daily inanities), and so it has proven. She risks treading a narrow path with her Treasury background but nobody is obliged to pass up a promotion.
- Karen Andrews is a former Hockey staffer who has taken to the busywork of committees and generally kept her head down while other newbie MPs aare still coming to terms with how the joint works.

Abbott is sending the signal to ambitious MPs that Howard did: knuckle down and do the busywork and I'll call on you in my own good time. Howard regularly broke that rule, with Abbott and Mark Vaile and Petro Georgiou to name a few, but hey.

Abbott deserves all the meagre rewards that come from having taken meagre risks. You, my dear readers, deserve all the best that the festive season and 2015 can offer, so we'll see what happens then.

Enduring ideas

There was a time when conservatives had plenty of policy ideas: the late 1960s. From that time came a number of initiatives that have had an enduring impact on public debate. The Labor Party generally, and Whitlam in particular, snaffled all but two of them.

Ask anyone: who brought the troops home from Vietnam? Whitlam (actually, McMahon had done most of that work earlier in 1972). Who set up the Australia Council to foster Australian film, literature, theatre and culture more broadly? Whitlam (Gorton set up the initial, tentative and under-resourced version of this entity). Plenty of big ideas from the Liberals are owned by Labor.

Liberals get no credit for the 1967 referendum on counting Aborigines in the census, nor for the (accidental) career of Neville Bonner, and Malcolm Fraser achieved quite a lot in Aboriginal Affairs (with ministers like Fred Chaney and Ian Viner) - but it is all knocked into a cocked hat with that image of Gough Whitlam's white fist leaking red soil into Vincent Lingiari's outstretched black hand.

That's where big ideas gets the Liberals: nowhere, politically. Proponents of big ideas seeking bipartisan support are wasting their time because there's nothing in it for the Coalition. To understand this is to understand why their only big ideas are warmed-over and inconsistent exercises in frustration and disappointment.

In the 1980s the Liberals organised around ideas, wets and dries, and a fat lot of good that did them. "Incentivation" failed in 1987. Shack's great health plan and the questions needing to be answered failed in 1990. Fightback! failed in 1993. John Howard led the tendency in the Liberal Party to disdain big ideas, and by 1996 Liberals flinched when confronted with ideas. Howard won in 1996 by stirring up apathy to Keating's "big picture" ideas on Aboriginal reconciliation, the arts and the republic. The defeat of the republic confirmed and reinforced it: forget big ideas.

Conservatives don't do big ideas. When in power conservatives see themselves as guarding the Treasury and the common weal generally, forming a gauntlet through which ideas that are costly, faddish, socialistic, or otherwise undesirable are filtered out. Any initiatives that survive such a rigorous process must truly be the Unstoppable March of Progress. Because any initiatives that survive conservative governments are considered inevitable, conservatives get no credit for them. Meteorologists get no credit for good weather nor any blame for bad.

Conservatives are disappointed that major policy initiatives in Australian politics come from outside their ranks. Independence for East Timor was a far-left irrelevance until John Howard seized the opportunity to realise it; apart from Jose Ramos Horta, nobody gives Howard much credit for that. Kevin Donnelly is trying his best in pushing for a return to classical education, but too few Liberals enjoyed such an education themselves and Donnelly has failed at persuasion/doing the numbers; they can't and won't sell it.

Howard's one enduring initiative, the gun buyback, occurred on the fly from within his office and not from the grass roots of the Coalition parties. It is being undone by conservative state governments fostering hunting in national parks and lifting restrictions on ammunition (the current government had a case to answer with lax customs detection of weapons imports, but Jason Clare appears to be limiting scope for criticism and will have made his reputation if he can render it a non-issue by September).

They can't have it both ways, acting as the scourge of new initiatives and wondering why none come from within - but yet they still wish it were otherwise. The central weakness of conservatism is that it can't distinguish between a structural shift and a passing fad, which is why structural shifts have to assert themselves politically in a way that passing fads can't. Conservatives were kept out of office until they embraced Medicare, and were not allowed in until they accepted warnings not to dismantle it. Gay marriage still looks like a passing fad to conservatives; but it isn't, and future conservatives will claim to be upset that doubt will be cast on their not-yet-evident support for this initiative.

In his youth, Tony Abbott learned the Big Ideas of Santamaria and the DLP: nuclear families made from wedded straight couples; opposition to abortion and euthanasia; and that the Church is never wrong and owes no compensation to anyone. From Howard he learned to disdain Big Ideas, and he generally does: but he is conflicted. He can't be trusted in his claims to support the NDIS; statements that the Coalition would only support an NDIS at some future time when the land is flowing with milk and honey is far more credible, however disappointing that might be for supporters.

He can't be trusted in his claims to support a comprehensive Asian language/cultural exchange program between Australian and Asian education systems (he calls this a "new Colombo Plan" for those seeking certainty in old ideas, but his proposal is nothing like that limited and outdated program). His dismissal of Big Ideas can be put down to 1 Corinthians 13:11 when it suits him, but when it doesn't his rhetoric keens for Big Ideas and the credit that attaches to them.

The two ideas from the late 1960s which Labor have been happy to leave to the conservatives are nuclear energy and northern development.

There was a serious proposal by the Gorton government to develop a nuclear energy industry. Within the current term of Parliament Josh Frydenberg attempted to revive the idea in his intellectually and politically timid way - to "call for a debate" without leading one, to ignore the developments in this area (including environmental knowledge) over the past forty years, and to generally overestimate the importance of Josh in making things happen. In Liberal terms, however, Frydenberg has revived a trusty Liberal issue that has sat in the bottom drawer awaiting its hour and its champion, and the opponents of the issue are almost all lefties so don't underestimate the frisson of political correctness that attaches to even talking about an Australian nuclear industry.

An Australian nuclear industry would be expensive to set up and maintain, and would take a long time to do so even with an unequivocally supportive government. It would, however, make a few people a lot of money. It follows, therefore, that those who stand to reap the rewards can bear the risk involved in getting the idea up. The fact that they have preferred for government to bear this risk leaves proponents looking politically exposed, attracting criticism without any compensating reward.

Northern development is like that, too:

• If you want to pay less tax, then forget about government building you free dams, rail lines and roads.
• Landholdings in southeastern and southwestern Australia tend to be small and numerous, so when you build dams there the economic benefit is widely spread through surrounding communities. Landholdings in northern Australia tend to be large and few, so a government that builds them a dam it will basically be donating public money to a small group of people who don't pay tax and aren't even Australian.
• The Co-Chairman of ANDEV, Gina Rinehart, lives far to the south of the Tropic of Capricorn, in Perth. Dominic Talimanidis, Director of the North Australia Project at the Institute of Public Affairs, also lives far to the south of the Tropic of Capricorn - in Melbourne, as does the Shadow Minister responsible for confusing this with a policy idea, Andrew Robb. All three are incurring vastly inflated labour costs. If these people won't live their own proposals there is no reason why anyone else should.
• As to 'immigration' magically solving labour-shortage issues in northern Australia, I'd suggest that Gina Rinehart saw the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at an impressionable age and won't be told there's no such place as Oompa-Loompa Land from which sufficient numbers of willing and underpaid workers can be drawn.
• Forget about setting up some sort of Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine because it already exists and has done for a hundred years. If you were in a position to do so, you'd write them a huge cheque to encourage them to keep up the good work and challenge the government (the incumbents and/or the opp-pose-ition) to match it - this would have far more credibility than sitting around in Perth or Melbourne dreaming up ways of spending taxpayer money by people who would rather avoid contributing, and proposing entities that exist already.
• Alternative to previous point: set up the Lang Hancock Centre for Tropical Medicine (motto: "Get out of bed and do some bloody work!") and see how you go attracting serious research talent.
• Speaking of health, if government was serious about this proposal it would be building hospitals, schools and other social infrastructure in northern Australia. It would be costing that infrastructure and preparing detailed assessments about labour needs. In the absence of such planning, with attendant budget estimates and opportunity costs etc.
• The government has avoided deploying ADF personnel to northwestern WA for very good reasons. ADF personnel are well-trained, fit, work in teams, follow instructions, and are underpaid compared to mining industry norms. If you wanted to cut the Defence budget and our operational readiness, you'd send them to areas where they earn a fraction of their neighbours.
• If you expect government to build all this infrastructure up north, proposals like this and this and that - and donations to the vehicle industry on which they run - will need to be revised (at the very least, journalists should question them). Think about what we could have done with all that money flushed down the Ord. It's either-or in this budget climate, not all-this-and-more.
• Where is the Australian FMCG company that could actually ramp up exports to Asia if required (because only then do we even get to the idea of a "northern foodbowl")?
• Given the shelving of Olympic Dam (south of the Tropic of Capricorn) and Ravensthorpe (likewise), what problem is this 'solution' trying to solve? Engineering types working in mining and construction should have a simple and firm answer to this question: what problem is this 'solution' trying to solve?
• The Northern Development plan is pretty much limited to farming and mining, as it was in the 1960s. No Karratha Google, no Ayr Apple, nothing that takes away from those who would take more than they contribute.
• Why aren't Aboriginal communities leading, or at least involved in, this push? Normally voluble people like Noel Pearson, Alison Anderson, and Bess Price seem very, very quiet on this arrangement.

Where the Coalition's push for northern development moves from merely being silly to being fraudulent and hypocritical comes when you look at recent political history in, of all places, South Australia:

• In the 1970s the SA government proposed to build Monarto to alleviate overpopulation in Adelaide. The Liberal Opposition regarded it as an ill-conceived and expensive extravagance;
• In the 1980s the SA government proposed to build a Multi-Function Polis to boost hi-tech employment in (not-necessarily overpopulated) Adelaide. The Liberal Opposition regarded it as an ill-conceived and expensive extravagance;
• In the last decade the SA government sought to facilitate a mine at Olympic Dam that would consume more power than the city of Adelaide. Who knows what the Liberal Opposition thought of that? Do you think such a power-hungry entity, mining uranium amongst other things, would have set up a nuclear power station at its own expense to show how it's done?

The Coalition is basically proposing a dozen Monartos in northern Australia. They'd be dual-function polises (farming and mining). The main argument against the "northern development" proposal is that those proposing it are refusing to face up to the electorate and economic situation that exists and seeking to socially-engineer a society that is more amenable to keeping them in office:

... Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

- Bertolt Brecht The Solution

There is something to Craig Emerson's quip that Abbott can't even be positive about own policies. Suspicion immediately falls upon Peta Credlin, who loathes Robb and probably thought such a leak would not rebound upon the leader to the extent that it has. Why does anyone think there's a scrap of electoral kudos in a 40-year-old idea that is so obviously doomed? What's the alternative?

With education and health - always big issues in Australian elections no matter what pollsters say - there are signs that the old ways won't do and that people are more open than some might imagine to trying new ways of doing things. Chris Pyne's insistence that the status quo of school funding is ridiculous. Peter Dutton's pronouncements would be just as silly if there were any. Neither man can maintain the assertion that local boards will fix more problems than they cause, or make worse. They simply aren't offering solutions to actual problems facing this country.

With his backdown on supporting people and communities with alcohol problems, and a couple of leaks, we would describe him and his team as in disarray if only these events had happened to the government. Abbott's problems run far deeper than that. This is the last election when the Liberals can dig their heels in and demand a return to all things Howard (well, except Howard himself, and Costello, and the heady pre-GFC economy ...).

Abbott suppressed initiative and centralised policy development in his own office, which he stuffed full of control-freak message numpties. Journalists should not be forming mutually-beneficial relationships with such people but going around them. Moderates of old would have bucked centralisation in the leader's office, but the hollow shells that remain have happily gone along with Abbott because they see no other alternative.

In order to cement his own position, Abbott has leached the Liberal Party of its capacity to articulate how the country could be governed differently and what it might look like if it so chose. That capacity will not return soon, either. Warmed-over ideas from the 1960s accrue no interest in the vault and get overtaken by new ideas, the development of which the Coalition play no part. They need to expire, and be seen to expire, publicly and unavoidably. New, big ideas from the Liberals will need a track record of success that they currently lack before they can take their forfeited place among those who help this country grow and prosper.

The empty mantle

The Liberal Party hasn't started 2013 at all well.

When your mainstream media coverage is stuck on an issue that makes people squirm (Peta Credlin's fertility) within a wider theme that is death for your side of politics (women: Tony Abbott just doesn't get them, but his side of politics wants him to be Prime Minister anyway), you need to change the subject fast. The Liberals chose the wrong guy (Josh Frydenberg) and the wrong subject (workplace relations).

Here's the article by Josh with a warm-up routine by David Crowe. You can read both for free by copying the headlines into Google.

First to Crowe. When Michael Stutchbury left The Australian he took a few acolytes with him, which didn't quite create a vacuum but did result in the backwash that swept Crowe into that organ (whether Fairfax or News benefitted least from that particular exchange is a debate fit only for pubs in Surry Hills or Pyrmont; even blogs have higher standards than that). Paul Kelly used to hold the title that Crowe now occupies, and the very idea of him writing a cloying intro for an Opposition backbencher would have seen him crack the mother of all tantrums.

TONY Abbott is being urged by his allies to commit to major workplace reform and encourage the use of individual agreements, as the Coalition's internal debate on the key election issue escalates despite fears of a political backlash.

It is not escalating. Liberal MPs are in their electorates, spending time with the families for whom they will later leave politics to spend more time. They are being asked can they really win with that man, and have run out of Chrissy comestibles onto which the conversation can be deflected.

Howard government adviser and rising Liberal MP Josh Frydenberg has reignited the industrial relations debate by calling for a crackdown on union power as well as changes to make it easier for employers and their staff to use individual contracts instead of union awards.

He's reignited nothing. As we'll see, Josh is proposing nothing that hasn't been chewed over for much of the past seven or so years. Crowe is wrong to make out that Frydenberg is shifting the debate, or adding anything nearly so substantial to constitute "ignition".

The Opposition Leader has raised hopes for a more assertive Coalition stance on industrial relations by vowing to release detailed policies early in the year, as business leaders seek a clear commitment from the Coalition to dismantle elements of Labor's regime.

Less than a fortnight into the year is pretty early, and to be fair to Abbott he is serving the community to a far greater extent as a volunteer firefighter than he has or even can by applying his talents and experience as a politician. Frydenberg isn't jumping the gun, as Crowe is trying to make out. He is part of the strategy of taking up media space without saying anything.

... Mr Frydenberg is stepping up the case for major reform by citing a "productivity slump" and a spike in workplace disputes as proof that the Fair Work regime has failed to deliver on Labor's promises.

He's not stepping up anything, he's reiterating what has been said before. Crowe is being cute with language here. It's the policy of his paper that Australia's overall productivity has flatlined since WorkChoices was abolished, even though economists find it hard to prove. Can't wait to read the article where Josh clearly establishes that the increase in disputes is directly attributable to the legislation.

Mr Frydenberg marks out three reform targets including scaling back unfair dismissal laws, which currently apply to employers with 15 or more staff. While [he] does not nominate an alternative threshold, some within the Coalition favour an increase to 20 or 25 staff so that more small businesses would gain exemptions from the unfair dismissal laws.

Why does he not nominate an alternative threshold? Why have others done so without putting their names to it? Surely this is part of the broader policy debate? Why can't the Liberals have a debate any more?

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox assailed the Fair Work regime last year in a speech that singled out IFAs for criticism on the grounds they had "promised so much but delivered so little".

Mr Willox said employers and employees could not rely on IFAs because the current rules meant either side of an agreement could unilaterally terminate the IFA with only 28 days' notice.

The government's review of the Fair Work laws last year suggested the period be extended to 90 days but Mr Willox said companies and their staff needed a more secure arrangement with terms of up to four years.

This is poor criticism: do you want flexibility, or comfort and security? Many commercial contracts have terms of less than 28 days. News Ltd could sack David Crowe and have him off their premises in far less time than that. If you want comfort and security offer permanent employment, or enter into a commercial arrangement beyond the Fair Work Act. Why criticise a piece of legislation for being too flexible, then complaining it isn't flexible enough? Rather than just transcribed Willox's words Crowe should have questioned him on it, like a journalist would.

Mr Ciobo urged Mr Abbott last year to back the restoration of individual employment contracts like the Australian Workplace Agreements used in the Howard government's Work Choices.

Other MPs are wary of doing so as Labor seizes on talk of individual agreements to claim an Abbott government would bring back Work Choices and AWAs, which were widely criticised in the 2007 election campaign for cutting working conditions.

In a sign of the internal differences, opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey declared last November that workplace reform was not a Coalition priority.

Bullshit.

Howard offered Joe Hockey the Faustian bargain whereby he could get into Cabinet only if he put together a piece of workplace relations legislation that was flexible only for employers, but which didn't appear that way and enabled the then-government to fudge electorally unappealling aspects of it. Hockey seized the opportunity and produced a piece of legislation every bit as long and convoluted as the Corporations Act, and which also brought on the biggest labour-movement scare campaign in recent history.

It isn't quite fair to blame Hockey for single-handedly losing the 2007 election for his side of politics. He should, however, have stood up to Howard and demanded some flexibility, and he had a duty to steer the party away from those rocks in debates since that time. The idea that the Coalition would have nothing to say on workplace reform is garbage - particularly as the leader said that there would be a whole new policy early this year, meaning that it is in fact a priority at the very time Hockey claimed it wasn't.

Mr Frydenberg has spoken consistently on the need for workplace reform but insisted last night that he was not proposing a return to the Howard government's IR regime.

Mr Frydenberg said his call for changes to the IFAs did not amount to reinstating a key element of Work Choices.

"It's about tweaking existing provisions in the Fair Work Act to ensure that they work more effectively for both employer and employee, so they're a more attractive option than is currently the case because they're under-utilised," he said.

Ah, so Josh doesn't want to "ignite", he just wants to "tweak". Why didn't you say so, David? LIBERAL MP BASICALLY HAPPY WITH LABOR WORKPLACE LAWS, CALLS FOR TWEAKING would be more accurate than exciting, but accuracy is an under-appreciated and greatly missed feature of newspapers today.

Extending the timeframe of the IFAs, along the lines proposed by Mr Willox from AI Group, was a serious issue that needed to be looked at, Mr Frydenberg said.

What non-committal tosh. Crowe should have called Frydenberg on that.

Mr Frydenberg, who worked as director of global banking at Deutsche Bank and as a lawyer at Mallesons Stephen Jaques before entering parliament, cites the business criticism of the Fair Work Act as a reason for an urgent response from the Coalition.

Again, Crowe is being cute here, puffing up Frydenberg's title at Deutsche and omitting the most substantial part of his pre-parliamentary resume. Frydenberg spent relatively little time in the private sector; there are senior officials in the Chinese Communist Party with more actual private-sector experience than he, including in the important practical areas of dealing with employees and unions. Crowe should have told his readers that Josh is yet another MP who has spent much of his pre-parliamentary career as a party hack (Frydenberg was a staffer to Downer and Howard). Regular readers of The Australian loathe career staffers and wrongly assume hacks are a feature only of the hated Labor government, and would discount Frydenberg's words accordingly if only they knew.

It's understandable that Frydenberg should want to get his name in the paper, but Crowe is meant to be the one with a bit of sense and experience on what news is. Crowe should have looked at Frydenberg's article and declared it as non-meaty as a tofuburger, then gently broken it to Josh that he won't get a run until he can actually contribute to a debate rather than just calling for one. Crowe has tried subtly undercutting Frydenberg but it hasn't worked.

Enough of Crowe and on to Frydenberg directly:

Labor believes there is a trade-off in the workplace between flexibility and fairness, and a contest between a greedy employer and a helpless employee.

This is simply not true.

Employers and employees need each other. Without an effective, workable partnership, there is no enterprise, no profit and no job.

Straw-man knockdown followed by vacuous motherhood statement! If there is such a thing as a stamp of authenticity from Josh Frydenberg, that has to be it.

This workable partnership is under threat from an overregulated workplace, where unions are emboldened, militancy is on the rise and productivity in decline.

These are problems of the government's own making. In return for union financial support at the 2007 election, the Rudd government's Fair Work Act increased union power in more than 120 areas. Greater right of entry, more authority over greenfield sites and an enhanced ability to restrict the use of independent contractors are just some examples ...

This is Australia's new industrial landscape - a throwback to the past, unwinding not only John Howard's reforms (which were responsible for more than two million new jobs and a 20 per cent rise in real wages), but also those of Paul Keating, whose 1993 reforms encouraged enterprise bargaining at the workplace level.

The result has seen productivity slump and costs rise, penalising the very workers Labor purports to represent.

This has all the red-meat indicators of a desire to scrap the Fair Work Act altogether and start again: none of that "tweaking" nonsense that Crowe was quoting. Which is it? Is the current legislative environment completely inadequate or in need of shoring up?

Working days lost through industrial disputes were up 83 per cent in the year to June 2012, levels not seen since 2004, and high-profile stoppages such as the Qantas strike and the blockade at Grocon's Myer Emporium site dominated front pages.

The two examples quoted were employer-initiated lockouts rather than employee- or union-initiated actions: not helpful in making Josh's point. It's telling that 2004 is the nadir Frydenberg uses: while Howard was in office but before WorkChoices, the point where the mining boom started to take off and so did wage demands. He fails to mention low unemployment as a factor in increased disputation.

I'll leave to a qualified economist to deal with productivity and industrial disputations. There's plenty of quant goodness to be had here too, and I'm disappointed it's to be expected that Frydenberg hasn't even engaged with the data.

Greater industrial disputation not only creates higher costs for companies that are inevitably passed on to consumers but can also lead to companies cancelling projects in the pipeline.

In the past 12 months Shell, BHP and Woodside have shelved more than $100 billion of investment as the viability of resource projects is called into question.

And when asked why they shelved those projects, those companies explicitly state that high labour costs aren't a factor. Only cranks like Gina Rinehart, who wants the government to build all her infrastructure and to pay her employees no more than $2/day, bellyache about high labour costs as a factor in investing in this country. The companies Frydenberg cites are all mining companies: mining produces about as many jobs as the arts sector.

In May, BHP chairman Jac Nasser said "restrictive labour regulations have quickly become one of the most problematic factors for doing business in Australia". Using BHP's Queensland coal business as an example, he said in the past year alone that business faced "3200 incidents of industrial action" and "received over 1000 notices of intention to take industrial action and then approximately 500 notices withdrawing that action given on less than 24 hours' notice".

BHP's experience is not a one-off. David Peever, managing director of Rio Tinto Australia, has also spoken out on the issue and Santos chief executive David Knox has said Australian labour costs were double those in competing jurisdictions.

When Nasser was called on his labour regulations remarks, he admitted that they weren't that significant. Commodity prices and the Australian dollar are far more significant in determining the viability of projects in Australia.

This hasn't gone unnoticed by our competitors and global equity investors. Last year Australia fell from 11th to 15th on the World Bank's ease of doing business index ...

And how much of that was down to the Fair Work Act and other workplace legislation? None? Thought so.

and in the World Economic Forum's measure of global competitiveness, Australia fell four places to 20th overall and 123rd out of 144 countries for flexibility in wage determination and 120th in hiring and firing practices.

The latter two indicators are tricky to sell politically. If you are going to make it easier to sack people you run straight back into the Your Rights At Work campaign. Innes Willox was complaining about a mere 28 days notice: imagine the flexibility of giving immediate notice.

If you're going to criticise the current legislation, it is important to be clear about what your criticism is. You might think you're a tactical genius for attacking from both sides at once, but it makes you look flaky.

... Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten remains, in Kathy Jackson's words, "Dracula in charge of the blood bank".

Not a smart move to be quoting Kathy Jackson. Abbott is stuck with her but you may as well go boozing with Peter Slipper for all the good it will do to your cause.

A former secretary of the AWU, Shorten has become "the minister for unions".

Yep, that's what happens to Labor workplace relations ministers. Something similar happens in Coalition governments to Nationals who become Minister for Primary Industry. I learnt that in first-year politics. It's amazing that Josh has only just discovered it; and not necessarily an indictment of teaching at whatever uni Josh went to as one can only do so much.

[Shorten] conducted a Clayton's review of the Fair Work Act ... ignored the Department of Finance's suggestion that the implications for productivity be included ... stacked the Fair Work Commission with former union officials ... government's intervention in a legal case in support of the union movement... crudely "partisan".

So with stock-standard Liberal criticism of a Labor minister, and referring to criticism from employer groups, it is hard to see how Frydenberg is getting out in front of Liberal policy or even contributing much to it. Crowe has sold readers a dog here; everything Frydenberg has said is a rehash of what others have said, with no inkling or enlightenment as to what we might expect from Coalition workplace relations policy (even though, according to a former Liberal Workplace Relations Minister, it isn't a priority at all).

Not to mention his long silence over the Craig Thomson matter, which has raised serious questions about the conduct of senior union officials and the willingness of Fair Work Australia to conduct a proper and timely inquiry.

Michael Lawler has a lot to answer for, eh Josh?

Since union votes continue to dominate Labor conferences and ex-union officials continue to dominate the Labor caucus - even though overall union membership is in freefall - it is clear only the Coalition can make the practical changes necessary to our industrial relations system.

By that logic, only Labor governments can regulate corporate interests.

Tony Abbott has the track record to do this. As a reforming minister he instigated the Cole Royal Commission, which led to the creation of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. In his book Battlelines he identifies the "destructive" elements of Labor's Fair Work legislation while pointing to industrial relations reform as a road to a more productive and fairer society.

Here we are in the fourth-last paragraph of Josh's article. While Frydenberg has name-checked everyone who has ever criticised Shorten and the legislation he administers, he hasn't used it to propel his argument as to what's wrong and what needs to be fixed. All he's done here is name-check the leader, who basically set in place the conditions that led to the breakout of 2004.

Now is the opportunity for the Coalition to go on the front foot and put forward proposals that make unfair dismissal laws less of a burden on small business, lead to individual flexibility arrangements in the Fair Work Act becoming more attractive to employers and employees, and put the brakes on coercive union power beyond reinstating the ABCC and making unions more accountable through reforms to their governance arrangements.

That's it? That's the policy substance we've all been looking for?

That's what The Australian (Financial Review) and the employer organisations has been expounding for years: some sort of alchemy whereby WorkChoices will just pop back onto the statute books without voters noticing. This is more substantial than Frydenberg's effort, and it reads like the blimpish eructations of an armchair general who doesn't bear responsibility for Liberals on the front line. If you asked someone like David Crowe what changes the Coalition would make to workplace relations - shit, if you asked me - off the top of one's head and without reference to Josh Frydenberg, anyone would probably rattle off a list like that. Buy the paper, indeed.

The only attempt Frydenberg has made at dealing with workplace relations policy was this. Scroll down to my name and you'll note my comments on how he and his mate Alan failed to take the issues (which affect broader workplace relations issues) seriously. With this earlier article, his sorry record generally, and now yesterday's effort (even with Crowe's build-up), it's clear that policy is not Josh's thing.

Ironically, the issue that Josh was tasked to change the conversation from - Peta Credlin's reproductive difficulties at work - offers a host of workplace relations issues that are worthy of examination from a policy perspective.

Policy wonkery is not the be-all-and-end-all of politics; there is a place for hard-headed political calculation too. Business got WorkChoices out of the Liberals but when WorkChoices was threatened in the 2007 election, they all but abandoned it and the Coalition. Greg Jericho might think outfits like this are somehow sinister, but from a Liberal perspective they are laughably insufficient. If Innes Willox wants WorkChoices back he can bloody well pay for it: if business won't back workplace relations reform to the extent necessary to beat the labour movement, the Liberals should not stick their necks out for them. If Frydenberg was ever going to bite a bullet in this debate, that was it: he shirked that too.

Never mind seizing the mantle, Frydenberg should just take his coat. There is nothing for his leader or his party in his typically sorry offering. Josh Frydenberg, as was said of Newt Gingrich, is a dumb person's idea of a deep thinker. He drifts into policy debates with nothing to say, no contribution to make, and drifts away having made no impact whatsoever. No Labor ministers need fear any challenge by Josh Frydenberg, and it's doubtful any do. Flattering him as Crowe and others do goes beyond merely gilding the lily: to call Josh Frydenberg an up-and-coming Liberal is to set him, and the Liberal Party, up for failure.

We need more and better consideration of the big issues facing Australia than Josh is capable of offering. We also need the press gallery to stop dragging him out of his depth and insisting that his hapless floundering is so much artful positioning.